Cable assembly for laser endoscope apparatus.

摘要

A laser endoscope includes a micro-thin optic cable assembly (34) which may be inserted into a body cavity by micro-surgical or non-surgical procedures. A coherent jacketed fibre optical bundle (40) is provided in the centre of the assembly having a diameter of no more than 3.5 mm with an optical lens system at the distal end (36) for detecting an image of a portion of the interior of the cavity. A pair of single optical fibres are spirally wound around the cable; one of these fibres (46) carries a laser light beam to the cavity and the other (48) is for redundancy. The proximate end (38) of the optical cable assembly connects to a remote unit (R) wherein a laser diode light source is provided to direct a beam of light into the end (88) of one of the single optical fibres. A TV camera in the remote unit, together with suitable optics, transmit the image from the optical cable (34) to a viewing screen (14) on the remote unit (R).